Global Journal of Human Social Science, F: Political Science, Volume 23 Issue 6

From 2018 to 2022, under the government of Jair Bolsonaro, the country was plunged into a social, economic and political crisis that lasted the entire four years of his government. Factors contributing to this crisis included: mismanagement of the COVID-19 public health crisis, collision with the illegal exploitation of natural resources, state sponsored hate speech, the systematic production and dissemination of fake news and the indiscriminate release of arms and ammunition purchases. Paradoxically, Figure 3 shows that in 2019 and 2021, the homicide rate decreased: from 29.6 in 2016 to 20.8 in 2020. Despite remaining high, rates had fallen from 29.6 in 2016 - the year of Dilma Rousseff's impeachment - to 26.6 - recorded in 2018, the end of the Michel Temer government. These data show that as the quality of the Brazilian democracy declined, homicide rates also paradoxically decreased. In Colombia we see the opposite occurring. Here the country experienced a slow but steady decline in homicide rates between 2015 and 2021, from 33.4 in 2013 to 27.5 in 2021. The decade beginning in 2010 was characterized by rapidly growing social and economic inequalities, occurring in tandem with stagnating economic growth. The latter resulted in greater income concentration and accentuated government delegitimization. While implementing fiscal austerity measures to deal the economic crisis, President Juan Manuel Santos’ government began negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which culminated in a peace agreement in 2016. This, directly or indirectly, consolidated the downward trend in homicide rates, as shown in Figure 3; here we observe a decrease from 33.4 per 100,000 people in 2013 to 26.0 in 2016, reaching 24.2 in 2020, with only a slight increase to 27.5 in 2021 (Norza Céspedes et al. , 2020; Ríos and González, 2021; Ríos-sierra and Bula-Galiano; Morales, 2019). The decline in homicide rates in Colombia seems to confirm the link between the strengthening of democracy and the decrease in homicide rates, unlike what happened in Brazil. Here, the state increased measures to improve public safety, invested in the justice system and created the National Security Guarantee Commission (CNGS) - whose function is to coordinate security activities between various government agencies. Finally, investigative units within the Attorney General's Office, aimed at tackling organized crime and corruption, were created. Added to these actions was the aforementioned agreement with the FARC and the demobilization of its fighters, which has reduced the number of armed conflicts. These measured have helped, but rates still remain quite high, showing there is more work to be done. Peru, in contrast to Brazil and Colombia, has historically had low homicide rates, even though its democracy is ranked far below them. An analysis of Peruvian data from 2013 to 2020 shows a stable downward trend in homicide rates compared to Brazil and Colombia. Peru has a tendency to mix formal democratic institutions with rulers who have authoritarian tendencies and high levels of corruption. It has been home to controversial elections with fraud accusations and acts of intimidation, all of which negatively affect public confidence in Peru's democratic institutions. The country invested in negotiations for a peace agreement with the Shining Path group. The group gained power in 1980; yet, its activities progressively lost intensity due to the arrest of its leader Abimael Guzmán in 1992. Although the conflict ended with a negotiated peace agreement, the accord failed to resolve the structural problems that motivated the conflict to begin with (Niño, 2020; Ríos, 2019). Peru continues to be one of the largest cocaine producers in the world and drug-related crimes generally occur in remote areas, unlike Brazil and Colombia, where the most lethal effects of this illicit activity are felt in urban spaces. Thus, it is possible that a considerable proportion of homicides go unrecorded, which means that official rates are likely underestimated. Peru has just as many social and political problems as Brazil and Colombia; furthermore, its institutions are considered to be weaker than those of Brazil and Colombia, and yet Bolivia’s homicide rates remain very low. These facts challenge the idea that weak democracies are correlated with high homicide rates. In the global democracy ranking, Peru occupies position 75, while its neighbors Brazil and Colombia occupy positions 51 and 53, respectively. The relationship between the functionality of the government - one of the factors that make up the institutional weakness index in Table 1 - and the homicide rates described in Figure 3 shows the extent of this apparent paradox more clearly. Similarly, despite facing a difficult economic situation, being one of Latin America's main cocaine producers, and ranking well below Brazil, Colombia and Peru (as shown in Table 1 and Figure 3), Bolivia has even lower homicide rates than Peru. The reasons for these low rates may be related to informal, traditional ways of resolving conflicts that are still employed in isolated regions; here, punishment systems similar to vigilantism are often used. In addition, disputes between groups linked to the drug trade have little expression in the urban space due to the absence of a large consumer market (Rubin de Celis, Sanjinés Tudela and Aliaga Lordemann, 2012). However, even if we assume that many murders are not reported in official record, Bolivia has extremely low homicide rates, especially for a country with such a weak democracy – weaker than that of Brazil, Colombia and Peru. Between 2015 and 2017, there was a slight increase in homicide rates due to a wave of violence linked to an increase in drug trafficking in urban centers, © 2023 Global Journals Volume XXIII Issue VI Version I 35 Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 ( ) F Homicide Rates in Fragile Democracies: Reflections on the Paradoxes of Latin America